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chjj parent
The VirtualBox virtualization drivers have serious issues. They're written so poorly that they're notorious for causing kernel panics on linux. The kernel devs consider your kernel tainted if you load the virtualbox modules.

I've crashed so hard using virtualbox that I didn't even get a kernel panic, just a box that wouldn't even respond to alt+sysrq.

On top of this, I personally prefer QEMU because it doesn't come with a clunky GUI.

colechristensen
There's a lot of bad information here.

Your kernel is tainted whenever you insert non-GPL-compatible modules, it has nothing to do with the quality of the software.

VirtualBox is perfectly usable without the GUI.

chjj OP
Incorrect. The kernel devs specifically cited the quality of the drivers when adding it to the taint list. Check the mailing list if you don't believe me.

https://lkml.org/lkml/2011/10/6/317

    The number of bug reports we get from people with virtualbox loaded are
    truly astonishing.  It's GPL, but sadly that doesn't mean it's good.
    Nearly all of these bugs look like random corruption. (corrupt linked lists,
    corrupt page tables, and just plain 'weird' crashes).
And the no-GUI, geared-towards-commandline, doesn't-have-directories-with-spaces type stuff is just my personal preference, as I've already said.
awda
This is also bad information. Kernel taint is a bitmap that represents a number of things:

  - Proprietary software (non-gpl-compatible, as you say. ex: vmware)
  - Crap (drivers/staging)
  - Out-of-tree modules (virtualbox)
  - whether the kernel has hit a BUG already
  - ...
  - lots of stuff
VirtualBox taints the kernel because it is out-of-tree, not because it is GPL-incompatible. Why is a GPL compatible kernel module(s) not merged yet?

Because the code quality is crap.

Karunamon
VBox was explicitly marked as tainted due to issues it caused, not some licensing philosophy.

https://lkml.org/lkml/2011/10/6/317

octopus
To be fair, VirtualBox runs flawlessly on OSX and Windows. I've also used VirtualBox without problems on Ubuntu. What Linux distribution you use ?
gtaylor
I've had Ubuntu 12.04 guests crash hard (like the commenter mentioned) on OSX and Linux hosts with VirtualBox.
octopus
Probably has something to do with the 3D acceleration Unity needs.

In my case (MacBook Air 2013 with 8GB of RAM I run Ubuntu 12.04.4 without a problem).

gtaylor
My installs are headless, no 3D accel or Unity needed.

As originally mentioned, the VBox kernel modules are of poor quality. You may or may not trigger an edge case in your daily use, with or without a desktop environment.

raverbashing
This also may happen if you have another virtualization driver installed (even kvm)
chjj OP
Arch. But I've also had virtualbox crash on Debian testing. It's a mess.
heywire
I personally had a terrible time using VirtualBox on a Lenovo T420 running Windows 7 x64 about 2 years ago. I was having frequent blue screens, so Lenovo sent out a tech to swap the motherboard. The issue persisted, and after some time, I noticed that it seemed to always occur when I had multiple VMs running. The problem went away when I migrated to VMware Workstation.
mbreese
Anecdotally, I've had issues on OSX with VirtualBox, so much so that I switched to VMWare Fusion on Mac hosts...
neckro23
VirtualBox is the only app I've ever seen kernel-panic OSX. Twice.

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